Zemana Anti Malware Review

Detailed Reviews

Everything is working fine until suddenly; your computer starts lagging. Your files start vanishing and turn into shortcuts instead. Terrified? Well, there are much worse things than this that can affect your system if proper care is not taken.

These are some of the prevailing circumstances we all have seen while using computer devices. These types of incidences are widespread after you exchange data from public places like a library, cybercafé, or any unknown friend.

This happens due to malicious programs called Malware. Malwares, like biological infections, come in different codes and have various methods of harming computer devices. They are many types of malwares among which viruses, worms, spywares, ransomwares, bloatware, etc. are most commonly encountered ones.

For getting rid of them, we need tools called Anti-Malwares or Anti-Virus programs. Both of these are designed to detect such threats, isolate them, repair the affected files, and then get rid of these infections. Depending on the engine of these programs and their dictionaries, they can carry out the cleaning tasks accordingly.

Pros

• Hassle-free setup for scanning a variety of malwares and removing them.
• Fast UI, can scan the system without too much load. The free version is able to clean many malware automatically.
• It has a sophisticated threat detection and removal engine.
• Auto-scan the system with real-time protection.
• Browser cleanup as an additional feature with malware protection.
• Certification from reputed source with excellent ratings for threat detection, and its removal.
• Excellent pricing plans for all of its products.

Cons

• Lacks some sub-features of an anti-malware program.
• No parental security mode. It does not have different scan options like a complete system scan or custom scan.
• Although the results from the test labs are high, it needs to have more tests conducted from other labs for gaining further trust in their product.
• No support for macOS
• Customer support can have some more contact options.

Introduction

In this review, we will be discussing about an Anti-Malware software. Typically, Anti-malwares are toned-down versions of heavy programs, i.e. anti-viruses. They are designed to function similar to these anti-viruses, except that they usually consume less space and fewer CPU resources.

In the list of many such anti-malwares, we are to review Zemana AntiMalware 3.0. It was started by three young college graduates in the year 2007. It is headquartered in Ankara, Turkey, and also has its office at Sarajevo, Bosnia.

From then, they have continuously tried to improve their product, and have enhanced the cleaning of varied infections from the system. They also have a mobile version of their anti-malware. The setup in both of them is almost similar.

With real-time protection and constant scanning, we may think that it will be taking considerable resources in the background. However, that was not the case. It merely took around 20 MB of memory space while it was in background. This is significantly lower than other programs that take more than 100 MB of memory space even in the background monitoring.

In this review, like any other anti-malware, we will check if it can remove most prominent infections, generate alerts, scan across browsers and networks, parental controls, and other such useful features seen in anti-malware software.

There are also some certifications issued by many organizations and independent labs, which allow us to judge if the capabilities of these tools are up to the mark or not. Here too, we will try to squeeze out the certification info from them.

As we move on with our review, we will certainly explore the core anti-malware features as well as what extra perks we get in the Zemana AntiMalware package.

Scanning the drives with Zemana AntiMalware

Now, the first and foremost job of an anti-malware is to examine and detect infections. For that, we need to either set up the schedule for automatic scans or do it manually.

In both cases, it becomes very evident that the software needs to do a comprehensive scan. By default, most anti-malwares, as well as anti-virus programs, are designed to prioritize to scan the main system drive.

In the case of using the scan feature of Zemana AntiMalware, there are main setups shown in the main menu of the program. There is no separate scan section for it.

On the front panel of its interface, there are some common choices like Scan Now, Real-Time Protection, Browser Cleanup, License, and Customer Support.

To launch the scan, we need to pick the Scan Now button. From there, it will start scanning the drive. Here, the drive being scanned is only the main system drive.

There is no option to do a custom scan or a full system scan. This was very underwhelming as well as disappointing. They need to include the custom scan button here. It is indeed an essential part of any anti-malware software.

Moving on, we also searched for a scheduled scan. To our demise, we did not even find that. This made it extremely meager compared to many other products in the market.

This has to be patched soon by Zemana AntiMalware. Scan type, scan schedule, scan criteria, etc. are the essential features in these tools. Also, there was no option to search for specific file extensions.

This pre-scan filter is also among the most used feature of anti-malware. We can focus the scanning perimeter and pick out the infectious processes quickly.

Regardless, we went ahead and scanned the system to see if it can detect any infection or not. Lucky for us, we didn’t have many infections lurking on. There were a couple of malwares, like bloatware, and a trojan was found.

Now, after that, there were multiple selections to be picked from for further engagement with the scan results. The choices were to either quarantine the threats, delete them, or to give them a safe pass.

These results are automatically submitted to their server for further enhancement of the anti-malware engine. The more reports/threats that are forwarded to the servers of such tools, the more it’ll increase the database of infections, and help them control the spreading pattern of such malwares.

We choose to quarantine the threats, and completed the action. This shows how minuscule the cleaning process has become.

But, in our view, we are not satisfied with these scanning methods. It may work for novice users, but the entire point of charging for a product is that we are providing better services than the free alternatives.

This was not the case with Zemana AntiMalware. Not to trigger them, but even free tools like Windows Defender performed very well then this tool and also had better features.

Even Windows Defender has the option to schedule a scan, select custom location for scan, and so on. We hope that Zemana will work a bit more on this anti-malware and update it, making a more sophisticated version.

Quarantine Vault and Log Files

We all have heard about many biological infections in real life. If the infections are contagious and deadly, they are confined to a selected location. Similar to that, for infections inside a computer system, the first task of anti-virus or similar programs is to isolate it.

By isolating it, the program can no longer affect other healthy files. Such types of isolation are known as Quarantine. Malware files are sent to the quarantine vault once they are detected, either by manual scanning or from real-time monitoring.

Here also, Zemana Anti-Malware is equipped with the same feature. To access this vault, switch to the Quarantine tab from the main menu. In this section, you can see the list of infected files.

From here, we can perform several operations on this infected file. Usually, these actions comprise restoring the data or permanently deleting them.

This section will also show the type of malware, its threat level, date of quarantine, etc. There is also an option to mark specific files as safe.

Restore and Mark As Safe are used frequently when the viruses we find are false positives. Most anti-viruses and anti-malwares are known to return false positives.

This is due to the conflicting nature of the program itself. With these mentioned options, we can filter the program we want to run and scan the leftover stuff.

Similar to the quarantine vault, we have a whitelist vault. Unlike the former one, this vault is used to safeguard files that are marked as safe. This means we are whitelisting the files from getting branded as a threat again.

Users can manually add the files too. For that, use the small Add button on the top. From there, we can add the files we want Zemana AntiMalware to skip, while scanning the system for infections.

Now that we have conducted various scans, quarantined, and also whitelisted few files, we can now check the log files for all the processes conducted here.

The log files are pretty meek and won’t offer anything special. With that, Zemana AntiMalware has once again provided us a distinct piece.

Unlike any other reports, this report has only three main choices, viz., date/time of scan, type of scan, and results. If you double-click on any of these files, we are shown some detailed stats of that scan.

Compared to many other malware remover programs, this report is restricted to the scan only. Other programs give a very detailed report of every action performed while real-time monitoring is turned ON.

In this detailed report, one section will list out the system credentials. The other part shows the details of the infection like detected files’ location, size, malware type, and its full nomenclature. We can even replicate these reports.

With this, we end assessing the integral core features of Zemana AntiMalware. So far, we have seen that their UI was very mediocre.

It is missing a few critical as well as sub-features in it. They can include parental security, network protection, custom scan, full system scan, and many other such perks.

Sadly, the package in Zemana AntiMalware is restricted to only essential functions. We hope that they increase the features in forthcoming updates. For now, we are left with one more part, i.e., certification tests.

Security Certification Tests of Zemana AntiMalware

Well, is it possible to practice in the medical field without a certification? Obviously no! You wouldn’t want to end up with a scamster without any certification from reputed sources.

Similar to that, when it comes to removing infections from our computer systems, we need a certified program. If you use the uncertified program, you run a risk of exposing your system to a whole new level of facades.

Many software programs in the market scam their customers and are bloatware themselves. For that reason, we check the reviews, test certificates, company reputation, and then try it.

When it comes to certifications in malware removal programs, there are many labs across the globe, both private as well as organizational. These labs conduct tests on anti-virus and anti-malware programs to see if they are capable of finding and removing the infections.

Depending on the test criteria, we can add many items into assessment like scan time, scan results, detection rate, removal rate, repair & recovery attempts, and other such functions.

We believe that if you are going to buy one such program, the first step is to see the certifications from such tests. Top products have these tests stamped on their website homepages and advertise them as much as possible.

Unlike them, we did not find any links on the website of Zemana AntiMalware. And after that, we contacted the customer support if they can bequeath us information regarding these tests.

They replied very swiftly and gave us some files with the test results. Due to the terms of the test conducted, we cannot go into much detail here.

Regardless, we can give you rough info about it. The test was conducted by MRG Effitas, an IT security testing platform. It is widely known for efficacy assessment, along with roots in research and analysis of such threats.

In their report of 360-assessment Q1-2016, they have included the test of Zemana’s engine. From there, they have used many other anti-virus engines of top products like Kaspersky, Norton, Avast, ESET, AVG, etc.

In the test process, we encounter multiple checkpoints, from where they measured the overall performance of these anti-virus engines.

In the test, Zemana’s engine blocked about 97.9% of infection files, with 0.4% PUA programs. In the case of regular ransomwares, it was able to hit 100% detection as well as removal rate.

When tested for financial malwares, it was able to detect and successfully quarantine them with a 95.2 % success rate.

Going through these results, it is evident that Zemana’s anti-virus engine is quite strong. The only point we feel mentioning here is that they need to include tests from at least two more labs, which will surely give them an edge in product trustworthiness.

Regardless, Zemana’s engine is valuable to kill malwares. With time, we can see an improvement in their engine.

Concluding here, we can say that Zemana AntiMalware would definitely hit nails over those pesky infections. The test results confirm that it is capable of handling most malicious programs.

Closing Verdict

When we think of stress-free and one-click protection from different malwares, Zemana AntiMalware is a workable option for everyone. It has some decent UI features and an excellent engine to detect and clean malware infections.

The UI of this anti-malware needs more functionalities, that’s for sure. Even then, it can detect and remove many of the infections. This is a good sign that the program will work regardless of its limited interface.

The pricing plans are quite cheaper compared to other anti-malware programs. Overall, it is quite a satisfactory product. The simple interface aids novice players to clean their system swiftly.

As for the recommendations, we have already suggested adding some more functionalities. Other than that, Zemana AntiMalware is totally worth the subscription. In case you doubt it, try the 15-day trial version to see its full potential.